


Third is the Door

by LittleObsessions



Category: Star Trek: Voyager
Genre: Angst, Character Death, Episode: s05e19 The Fight, Epsiode Related, F/M, Introspection, Madness, Prompt Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-15
Updated: 2018-03-15
Packaged: 2019-03-31 11:46:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,294
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13974462
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LittleObsessions/pseuds/LittleObsessions
Summary: "I know I’m not going to - I know that the disease the Doctor found all those years ago has ravaged your brain so violently that it wouldn’t matter if I stumbled upon a miracle - but I like to pretend. I pretend a lot these days, and it isn’t pretty, but it is all I have."What if Chakotay's 'crazy gene', as explored and eradicated in 'The Fight', reappeared?





	Third is the Door

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Killermanatee](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Killermanatee/gifts).



> Ah, so a huge thank you to JHelen for kicking what was a mess of introspection into shape. I am indebted to her.  
> This is a gift for Killermanatee, as she suggested the prompt, and it took a hold of me. The book club is not good for my self-control.  
> The normal disclaimer applies.

 

 

* * *

Third is the door of madness. There are times when the mind is dealt such a blow it hides itself in insanity.- **Patrick Rothuss**

* * *

 

The only title I ever coveted was Admiral.  The pursuit of the title was the constant, the one thing which never shifted across the landscape of my life.

I wanted so badly to be just like my father - not only exploring space, but reshaping what it meant to explore, to reshape the foundations, not only of exploration, but of what humans could accomplish. I needed to achieve the admiralty, I needed to prove that his death wasn’t in vain, and that his absent fathering had somehow been worth all his sacrifices, and ours.

I know, now, that any choice I could have made would have been valid. That if I’d settled with being a housewife and a mother, he would still have been proud of me.

But youth is a playing a terrible trick, making you think it is eternal, and it is plagued by the kind of hubris that made me think there was only one path for me to take. Youth is also eternal until suddenly it ceases, and your bones ache and you move more slowly and you’re just an admiral behind a desk.

And suddenly your legacy is empty, and barren, and desolate, and all those other horrible words you were never brave enough to attribute to yourself. 

Then the climax; one night, as darkness wrapped itself around San Francisco, as you watched the fog rolling in off the Bay, and your apartment was empty of your husband, and the pips had no way of keeping you warm, you realised the only title which ever mattered was the only one you wouldn’t take.

That revelation was excruciating. It still is.

By the time I was that woman, there was no way to pick my way back.

_You forgot to meet me at McKinley twice._

I lift the cultures, and slide them carefully under the cellular microscope. I’ve looked at the same sample - I don’t know many times, I’ve lost count - over and over again, I know doing this will yield nothing, but it’s a comfort to do it anyway. My fingers are trembling as I remove it, that pain, so sudden and not so new and pulling on my breastbone, and it shatters onto the sterile floor of the lab. I just leave the mess there, the suspension seeping slowly across the glowing tiles, because what does it matter?

 I promised I wouldn’t fail you, but I know I have because I am here, and not with you.

 And if that isn’t failure, in all the ways a wife can fail, I cannot fathom what is.

 And I failed you so many times and in so many ways over the years that I’ve stopped counting.

 We left it to the night before we were married to sit down and discuss my title. We had hovered about it for so long that it had become huge to me. I suspected it had become important to you in a way I could not define, or perhaps in a way I didn’t want to.

 We could always talk to each other, a covenant we’d made after the silence we’d adopted during our final years in the Delta Quadrant, but this felt like a topic we couldn’t broach.

 You were always braver than me. And you struck out again, knowing you’d only get the verbal lashing or worse - the indifference - I would give you.

  _I’ve had to tell you Sekaya was dead six times._

Sitting me down, handing me a coffee it was far too late to drink, you let the dog jump into you your lap and settle there before you said:

 “Are you going to be Admiral Chakotay or not?”

 You already knew the answer, I could see it in your eyes. You always thought you disguised your disappointment well but I got so good at seeing through you, that your frustration was blindingly obvious to me. Yet I did nothing.

  _I’ve had to restrain you ten times._

 We made such a good team, so to my mind it seemed trivial to march under the same banner when it didn’t make a difference to who we were as a unit. The same name or not, we were formidable and in love, and we’d overcome more than any couple could have hoped.

 And my arrogance, my worst kept secret and my most despicable trait, was being too proud to give up a name I had worked so hard for.

 Now of course, I see the folly in that. It mattered to you. But I wasn’t looking at you, just at me.

 So I shrugged, and clung on to the last bit of myself I didn’t want to give away. I could have lied and said it was about women, forced for millennia to take everything that was their husband’s, and discard everything they had been, but I didn’t. Instead I used something that I knew would get your back up. Your Achilles heel, and biggest difficulty - your heritage.

 “It’s easier for me to keep Janeway. Your tribal customs are so complicated and -“

 “Don’t blame customs,” you interrupted, though you weren’t angry. “Just tell me you don’t want to. I don’t get it, but I respect it.”

 The truth was, and we both knew, I simply didn’t want to.

 You pretended to respect my choice and I let you.

  _You lost your wedding ring three times._

 Respect was always your gift, the thing you had that I loved more than anything. You respected everyone, the world and everything in it, and all of the mysteries and wonders beyond it.

 I was, in complete contrast, laissez faire about all the wonders I could have enjoyed – from the big to the small - I couldn’t enjoy one thing for being desperate to move onto the other.

 Nothing awed me enough.

 The only time I could pause was when I was in bed with you, when we made love. Oh the sex was great, it certainly never got boring. Even as we aged, even when we were apart for months, sex always brought us back to a base point. You prided yourself on our connection, and I prided myself on you too.

 But everything else? I was too keen to move, and you couldn’t tie me down.

 “Pause,” you used to say, taking my face between your hands, “be in the moment.”

 And I tried. Three times I composed my resignation, I even tendered it once, and then another mission would come calling, and I deleted it and kept on going.

 I never took that rank bar off; not in the way that mattered.

 I have to apologise for that, I have to apologise for lots of things.

 I know now I won’t have the time, or the courage.

  _You forgot the door code twelve times._

 So instead I stay in this lab; the old admiral who’s trying to find a cure for her dying husband. They pity me, from the young ensigns to the fresher, more dynamic admirals, I see it in the way their eyes slide over me, too embarrassed to maintain more than polite contact. But my name still has clout, and they respect names in Starfleet, so they let me get on with it.

  _You forgot my name so many times I don’t want to count._

 They let me hide here, and pretend that I’m trying to cure you.

 I imagine they like the story they’ve likely fabricated, the tragic romance of it all, the cloud of desperation hanging over me as I seek to save the love of my life. They don’t realise I’m not trying to cure you, but trying to reverse time.

 And to make amends.

 I know I’m not going to - I know that the disease the Doctor found all those years ago has ravaged your brain so violently that it wouldn’t matter if I stumbled upon a miracle - but I like to pretend. I pretend a lot these days, and it isn’t pretty, but it is all I have. Cognitive dissonance, is what he muttered.

 Sometimes I dream the entire scenario: finding a cure, loading the hyposprays with trembling fingers and rushing to you, and making you take them. And we’re suddenly so much younger, and I can make amends. Sometimes I even think it is real.

  _I’ve dreamed this fifteen times._

 And more than that, this lab is the somewhere I can try and show you I’m finally committed.

 And it’s safe here, I don’t have to face you here.

 You joked that all the boxing addled your brain, but we knew it was back. Though instead of doing anything, I just…counted.

 First the voices only you could hear, and then the visions which would terrify you to the point of hysteria. I could see it in your eyes; all that fear, all that panic. The terror you felt transported me back to _Voyager_ , to my trembling hand caressing your shoulder in the only way I could show you I was afraid.

 And it transported me back to my mistake, and I will tell you now: I blame myself. At least that is one thing I am very clear on. And if you could see what I remember, you would blame me too.

_I made one hundred and thirty one mistakes._

 Because this is my fault. I made you go back, and fight them, and fight them again. It wasn’t just chaotic space, it was chaotic everything. Chaotic me, and you. You begged me, but I used that old line on you; “It’s for the good of the ship.”

 For the good of the ship and to the detriment of you. But when did you ever matter in my grand scheme?

 You never could resist a higher cause, maybe that is why you married me.

 I was, I am, so beyond your moral compass, and yet you stuck around anyway.

  _You saved me hundreds of times._

 And so I blame myself. If I hadn’t made you go back, and find our way out of there, you wouldn’t be sick now.

 This is my punishment; watching you slide into a madness I orchestrated, and being alone in the knowledge that it is my doing.

 They tell me now you won’t take the hyposprays, that you are convinced they’re trying to turn you into your grandfather. There’s a bitter joke in there somewhere. If I could find it, I would laugh.

 I cast my eyes over the padd at my side, the notes the Doctor gave me from all those years ago, even though he knows my quest is futile, and my eyes blur.

 It is not exhaustion, it is fear. There are tears, I am crying, and they drip hotly onto the padd, over my old, tired skin.

  _I have cried thirteen times in the last three days._

 Chakotay, I am afraid. I am afraid of so, so many things.

 This is one fight we’re going to lose, and it kills me that it’s the last one. It’s poetic, as a punishment, but it doesn’t mean it hurts any less.

 Just because of the symmetry in it, and the lyricism, it doesn’t mean I don’t feel like I’m dying too.

  _You’ve been in Medical for seventy two days._

 We fought a lot, didn’t we? Over stupid things and big things. Over my selfishness and my ambition. Over the mistakes I made. So many. Over the fact I did everything alone.

 That even when I married you, I wouldn’t march under your banner. I never could give everything to you, in the end.

 And yet you were happy to take what I gave you, and live in the space between. You kept taking the blows, despite having given up the ring, ropes and canvas a very long time ago.

 Thank you for taking my bare minimum, and treating it as if it was my everything. I think that’s what I need to say. Except I can’t find the words, and now they would mean nothing to you.

 You are too far gone.

 As I begin fruitlessly setting up another slide - this time with a more progressed protein chain that I’ve tried to alter with nanoprobes - my aide comes into the lab. I have to push all the detritus aside to make room for the petrie dish: coffee cups, the meals they keep trying to make me eat, the papers.

 I know instantly what is happening, I feel it inside me - the breaking of some things, and the severing of others. The dropping of a curtain on a production which should never have ran.

 My heart slows, and nearly shuffles to a stop.

  _I have been hospitalised four times now._

 But I keep tidying, and making room for the dish, and pretending my aide isn’t there.

 My aide bows his head, “Admiral, Medical is comming you.”

 I stay exactly where I am, on my stool, and twist the faded gold band - too big on my finger now - and think of everything I wanted to say to you. I slide it off, and slip it into my pocket, beside my rank bar.

 Youth is a terrible trick, and so was thinking I had all the time in the world.

 The last time I saw you - the last time I could bear to be with you, without feeling like I was drowning - you took my face between your withered hands, still warm, and I couldn’t tear my eyes from the fading ink on your brow.

 “Who are you?”

 You asked.

 And for the first time, ever, I said “Mrs. Chakotay.”

 And for a moment, I think you smiled.

 


End file.
